Making Changes

• Fork the bsonpatch/bsonpatch repository
• Make your changes and push them to a topic branch in your fork
  • See our commit message guidelines further down in this document
• Submit a pull request to the bsonpatch/bsonpatch repository
• Update bsonpatch/bsonpatch GITHUB issue with the generated pull request link

General Guidelines

• Only one logical change per commit
• Do not mix whitespace changes with functional code changes
• Do not mix unrelated functional changes
• When writing a commit message:
  • Describe why a change is being made
  • Do not assume the reviewer understands what the original problem was
  • Do not assume the code is self-evident/self-documenting
  • Describe any limitations of the current code

Commit Message Guidelines

• Provide a brief description of the change in the first line.
• Insert a single blank line after the first line
• Provide a detailed description of the change in the following lines, breaking paragraphs where needed.
• The first line should be limited to 50 characters and should not end in a period.
• Subsequent lines should be wrapped at 72 characters.
• Put Closes: https://github.com/bsonpatch/bsonpatch/issues/XXX line at the very end (where XXX is the actual issue number) if the proposed change is relevant to a tracked issue.

Note: In Git commits the first line of the commit message has special significance. It is used as the email subject line, in git annotate messages, in gitk viewer annotations, in merge commit messages and many more places where space is at a premium. Please make the effort to write a good first line!

Java Guidelines

Assuming you're using Eclipse:

Go to Eclipse > Preferences, then:

Java > Editor > Save Actions:

• Uncheck “Format source code”
• Check “Organize Imports”
• Check “Additional Actions” and add the following actions:
  • “Remove unused imports”
  • “Remove trailing whitespace on all lines”

General > Editors > Text Editors

• Check “Show print margin” and set the value to 80

Additional set of rules from the Google Java Style Guide^[2] that are enforced:

• 4.1.1 Braces are used where optional
• 4.1.2 Nonempty blocks: K & R style
• 4.4 Column limit: 80
• 4.8.2.2 Declared when needed, initialized as soon as possible
• 6.1 @Override: always used
• 6.2 Caught exceptions: not ignored
• 6.3 Static members: qualified using class
• 6.4 Finalizers: not used